The Alternate Routes at Hartford’s Infinity Hall

Published 12:00 am, Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The Alternate Routes will perform at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford on Saturday, Sept. 16. From left are Eric Donnelly, Kurt Leon, Tim Warren, Ian Tait and Taryn Chory.

The Alternate Routes will perform at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford on Saturday, Sept. 16. From left are Eric Donnelly, Kurt Leon, Tim Warren, Ian Tait and Taryn Chory.

Photo: Jenna Pace / Contributed Photo

The Alternate Routes at Hartford’s Infinity Hall

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The Bridgeport/Fairfield-based band, The Alternate Routes, is hitting its folk and roots-rock groove in new ways. Vocalist Tim Warren said it feels like everything is just clicking.

He attributes it to factors involving the band’s members, the production team and the talented video artist working with the band who seems to really know what the musicians are all about.

“Safe Haven” and “Stronger” are among the Routes’ latest tunes. Fans will have a chance to hear them live when the group performs at Hartford’s Infinity Music Hall on Saturday, Sept. 16. Also playing will be Gracie Day and the Knights, the folk rock group that won the 2017 New England Music Award for Best New Act.

The Alternate Routes has been performing for more than a decade, and has had its songs featured in the Sochi Winter Olympics, as well as on television’s “NCIS.” But Warren, 35, said he believes the group is onto something new and exciting, as it continues to share a full range of emotion through its music.

“We have songs that celebrate life and songs that also kind of shed some light on some difficult things that happen in the world, and that have happened to us,” Warren said, speaking by phone from his Fairfield home.

The audience can expect “a proper rock ’n’ roll show,” where the band is “talking about things that are important to us through music, and celebrating those things.”

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He and his songwriting partner, guitarist Eric Donnelly, like to paint pictures with their tunes. “There is an unspoken thing we both gravitate toward,” Warren said. “We draw from the same well of agreement.”

It’s a well that has changed and matured over time.

“When we sit down to write a song now, we are trying to simplify what we are saying. We try to make sure the message is clear; that has been our latest goal.”

Being a glass-half-full kind of person, Warren said, “The main ingredient we always try to include, no matter what, is hope. Even if the lyrics are less hopeful, I think the music picks up the slack and vice versa. But I don’t think we have ever tried to put a song out that had no silver lining.”

Warren, who grew up in Farmington, has loved music since he was a child. He got his first taste of performing as a second-grader when he appeared in his first and only school play, “The Wackadoo Zoo.” He earned the lead role and sang several tunes. “In anything you do, if you get an early vote of confidence like that, it sticks with you.”

When it comes to the Alternate Routes, Warren said what he’s most proud of is how the band covers a lot of territory. “There are big, exciting electric moments and very small intimate acoustic moments, and everything in between.”